Computing systems have made significant contributions toward the advancement of modern society and are utilized in a number of applications to achieve advantageous results. Numerous devices, such as desktop personal computers (PCs), laptop PCs, tablet PCs, netbooks, smart phones, servers, and the like have facilitated increased productivity and reduced costs in communicating and analyzing data in most areas of entertainment, education, business, and science. One common aspect of conventional computing systems is the multi-core processor.
In multi-core processors, one or more of the cores may be selectively turned off to conserve power when the workload can be handled by a lesser number of cores. In some conventional systems, an integrated circuit may include a cluster of two or more high performance cores and a lower performance core as illustrated in FIG. 1. Execution of processes (e.g., thread) may be switched to the lower performance core when the processing performance of even a single high performance core of the cluster is more than necessary. However, in the conventional integrated circuit, execution of the processes is first transferred from the various cores (e.g., f-CPU1/2/3) of the multi-core cluster to a predetermined core (e.g., f-CPU0) of the multi-core cluster. After the processes have been transferred to a predetermined core of the multi-core cluster, the threads are then migrated to the core of the single core cluster. Although performance parameters such as processing speed, utilization, power consumption, and the like are improved on the conventional integrated circuit processor having, the combination of a multi-core cluster and a single core, there is a continuing need to improve the processing performance of integrated circuit processors.